Putin’s Gazprom boss applauds his pet conductor
NewsJust as the Greek-Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis appeared to have distanced himself from being funded by the Putin regime, a selfie appears of the Gazprom boss Alexey Miller applauding his pet conductor.
The picture, posted by the German journalist Axel Brüggemann, was taken nine days ago, on September 2.
Miller is the lackey who, on Putins’s orders, switched off gas supplies to Germany and western Europe.
How much longer will Germany’s SWR orchestra put up with Gazprom’s musical pet?
Not to mention the Baden-Baden and Salzburg festivals.
Especially as winter draws in.
More here.
If life were only so black and white…
Tell that to the innocents in Ukraine who had their homes blasted to nothingness. It was very black and white to them.
Yes, Currentzis pulled the trigger himself and the SWR was standing next to him and applauding.
Seriously? It’s ok to be – voluntarily! – financed by Putin’s regime, as long as one does not commit war crimes personally?
What planet is your ethical compass from?
I respect your ethical compass. But it is hypocritical to go after a conductor and his orchestra, which is of course financed by a inhuman regime, when we buy gas from the same regime for billions of euros every day. So let’s avoid swinging the moral club.
That is a flawed comparison. We buy gas because it is essential to the functioning of the economy and the society. Not because we want to, but because we have to.
Now the arts are not essential in the sense that moral obligations take a backseat to economic realities.The arts represent our best aspirations as humans. The gas represents our basic elementary needs.
By the way, buying gas from Russia is not worse than buying oil from Saudi Arabia, one of the most backward and cruel regimes on this planet. It has been done for decades by all sides.
So, to sum it up: it is ok to do business with scumbacks if it is vital to our survival. When it comes to music and art, we are supposed to be exemplary moralizers.
In a way, yes. Because those are very different areas. The essence of gas is in its caloric value to us. The essence of art is in its aspirational expression of our humanity. You can be a scumbag and sell gas. You can not be a scumbag and be a meaningful artist for others.
Of course we prefer not to by gas from scumbags and war criminals. But sometimes we have to in lack of immediate alternatives. With art it’s different for obvious reasons.
Without wanting to offend you, I’ll return your question from earlier directly to you: On which planet do you live? “Aspirational expression of our humanity.” is sentimental talk. If art were something absolute, I would agree completely. But it is not. Art (and music) has been a huge industry and profiteering since the early 20th century at the latest. The author of this blog has written a couple of books on this, which I recommend reading, even if it’s hard for me to say so. In the end, it’s all about power and money. And anyone who denies that must be completely naive.
Again with the whataboutism?
Sentimental talk?
If art is just business, then what is the traded good?
Has credibility anything to do with the value of it?
Not sure you got what art is about. But you are right there are a lot of cynical people among the highest earners in this business.
But still the line is drawn somewhere else.
Yes, the winter is coming, but fear not, the gentlemen of Germany had a hearty laugh at the UN, when Orange Man Bad told them not to be so dependent on Russia.
They must have had a plan, then?
Surely, Biden not only fights so virtuously for “the soul of the nation”, he will also establish world peace.
Exactly. Things are “complicated” until they affect your home and children.
Terribly difficult to differentiate between supporting a democratically elected Ukraine government vs. a russian dictatorship that invades and murders women and children. Flip of the coin for you?
Democratic elected with billions of US $ for the anti Russian fraction in Ukraine – as openly stated by the US state department, fact – but otherwise you are right.
Always easy to have the armchair judgement.
First, as proven during the past 75 years, and reiterated during the past 12 months comparing Ukraine with Afghanistan, all forms of US aid can support but not create democracies. To date, all US aid to Ukraine has been directed toward supporting legitimate causes promoting Democracy rather than Karzai-like kleptomaniacs. Even russian “news” sources have failed to document self-serving use of aid by the Zelenskyy government. Second, I’m not sure if you meant to say anti-russian faction or fraction but regardless I challenge you to demonstrate anything close to meaningful support for russian influence in Ukraine, let alone occupation, among Ukrainians. Third, armchair judgment, at least judgment from arm’s length, is easy when the facts are so clear.
Ukraine had a democratic government, until it was toppled by the US supported Maidan unrests.
Now the west didn’t like that government in Kiev, but democracy was not a factor. (never is a priority when it comes to US interests abroad)
Ukraine is ranked extremely low on the EU/UN corruption indexes, kleptocraty indeed, regardless if the government is of russian or anti-russian affiliation.
US interests in Ukraine were always clear in the open, only methods were conspiratorial: Divide and conquer. Simple. And worked effectively. And Putin is an idiot. As are the Europeans in the EU, what losers.
Russian influence in Ukraine? Russia is deeply interwoven within the Ukrainian culture, nation, economy, for centuries.
Ukraine is low on the corruption index; please meet russian puppet Viktor Yanukovych. As for the rest of your conspiracy laced comments find me 10 people in Kyiv who want russia in their country. The Ukrainians were starved by russia during Stalin, bullied by russia until 1989 and are now free thanks to the assistance provided by the US and EU. Perhaps you can lobby russia to contribute oil/gas to rebuild what they’ve destroyed and turn vp over to the Hague for an open war crimes trial.
Anybody who knows a little bit about the history of Ukraine – and is not a simplistic idiot or nationalistic hater – knows how complex and intertwined Russian and Ukrainian identities and cultures are.
Btw Stalin’s famines were not ethnically or nationalistically motivated, but ill guided communist class struggle ideas. People were dying in Russia as well.
No doubt the vast majority of people in Kiev do not want to belong to Russia at all. But go to some regions in Eastern Ukraine or Crimea, and you get the opposite picture. The mistake was probably, to not sort these issues and borders better during the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Only a simplistic idiot or pawn of a fascist state would engage in long-winded and tortured logic to try and argue that the current Ukrainian experiment with Democracy isn’t unique in it’s history, supported by virtually the entire population, made possible (after the russian invasion) by the US, EU and NATO and threatened daily by the barbarism of one foreign leader.
You are not seeing the bigger picture. This conflict, now war, was never only about common men and women in Kiev or Donezk wanting democracy and economic prosperity. It was always a proxy conflict on the ‚Grand Chessboard‘ of the bigger powers on the planet.
You should apply for the empty chair as Secretary of State at Twitter.
You should learn a bit about history and geopolitics.
In this case it is.
Stir, stir, stir…
Currentzis is a great musician and conductors, the audience has the freedom to listen to his work
You should have heard his Beethoven 5!
The most obscenely ugly performance of Beethoven I have ever heard.
Great musician my ass!
The guy just plays PR like a violin, and runs a girly cult.
Poor guy, it must be really frustrating doing stuff just for conning money out of people.
I could feel sorry for him, if he weren’t made of such obvious conman desperation….(anyone else heard of Diaghilev festival….ha – ha!).
Just sums the bloke up,- making up some fake image about some really nasty Russian impressario character who happened to come from Perm, and which “propaganda stuff”, the Russian gov go into denial about.
So where was Brüggemann and his legion of German journalistic colleagues while the US government was warning Germany for years not to become dependent on Russian gas? Where were he and his colleagues, and the entire US press corps, while Russia and the West were heading toward a proxy war that with better leadership could have been voided long ago? Brüggemann’s hate campaign against Currentzis–and yes, that’s what it is–is little more than a belated cover for the hypocrisy and short-sightedness of our leaders and the press corps that serves them.
Currentzis is corrupt.
We will never forget him in Perm, the very byword for conman, and fake musician.
Funny he never seemed to work particularly hard either.
This so called “genius” conductor couldn’t hold a candle to Solti, Fricsay, Ormandy, Szell, Dorati, and that’s using only little Hungary as a reference….
The SWR holding out is indeed astonishing. How could they not have fired him yet? Incredible.
But he conducts there so little, so it makes little difference anyway.
From their statement in March, it appears that they have no problem how Currentzis’ orchestra is financed. According to information from the internet, his concerts with the SWR are always sold out. People buy tickets, cheer, enjoy his interpretations and are happy. The orchestra renewed his contract for three more years last September. So here you have a bunch of reasons why they haven’t fired him. May this be morally rotten and ethically questionable? Of course it is. But money and power rule the world. If you still don’t get that, maybe now is your moment. Face reality and don’t wallow in some utopian idealism.
No, the arts are not energy politics or security politics and are worthless if the protagonists are corrupt crooks like Currentzis. How can you dance to the tune of the Russian oligarchy during Putin’s war AND get a fat salary from the German radio fee payers? What a scandal it is.
As for his musicianship: I find him to be a talented con-artist, but apparently some people have a fetish for that kind of psychopathology, it’s a free market. But all that is not relevant in the political picture.
This boils down to this pointless discussion about the separation of artist and work, to which there is no answer. Wagner was a brilliant composer and at the same time an ardent anti-Semite. Kinski was a great actor and at the same time beat and abused his daughter. Karajan was a member of the NSDAP and yet a great conductor. Obviously, the SWR separates Currentzis as a conductor and musician from him as a political person. I understand that in an ideal world this would be different, but the reality is that the time for any consequences has passed. The SWR has continued to schedule concerts with him, he has conducted in Salzburg, he is conducting in Baden-Baden. No one is going to have the nerve now to kick him out. Money and power wins, integrity and morals lose. Sad but true, and in the end of the day: nothing new.
sensible comment, thank you
It is getting really boring. After more than half a year you must have understood that nobody is interested in this topic anymore and obviously least of all the SWR. You are trying to keep up the pressure, but in the meantime you are just making yourselves look ridiculous. Come to terms with the fact that people don’t care about your morally insane drivel. Either you are bored to death or you have a sick obsession with Currentzis.
Leaving aside Ukraine, no loss to musical life if Currentzis slides into oblivion…
He pays him, why shouldn’t he applaud him?